Labour knows what it is like to inherit an economic mess. It did so in 1974, when Britain was on the verge of a period of high inflation and rising unemployment. It did so in the even tougher circumstances of 1945, and it will do so again if it wins on 4 July.
Things are not as bleak as they were when the second world war ended, but coping with the twin shocks of the past five years – a pandemic and a European war – has been a struggle. Repairing the damage will be costly and time consuming.
Everywhere, from NHS waiting lists to streets littered with potholes, there are signs of public sector decay, yet investment spending is being cut. Human capital has been eroded. Living standards have fallen. Taxes have been raised. The national debt is at its highest level since the early 1960s. With inflation falling and growth returning, there are signs of the economy gradually emerging from a period of acute crisis, but it does so battered and bruised.
These, too, were the circumstances that confronted Clement Attlee’s postwar administration – only more so. Britain was on its uppers when the war ended, yet despite facing what its chief economic adviser, John Maynard Keynes, called a “financial Dunkirk”, the Attlee government embarked on a programme of radical reform that over the next six years led to the creation of the NHS and the cradle-to-grave welfare state. It remains the benchmark against which all subsequent Labour governments have been measured.
There were a number of factors that helped Attlee from 1945 onwards. The collectivist spirit of wartime was strong and continued into peacetime. The coalmines, the railways and the public utilities had been brought under effective public control between 1939 and 1945, so nationalising them was relatively uncontroversial. Export-led growth required voters to submit to rationing and a much more brutal dose of austerity than that seen since 2010. Even so, Labour was only able to meet its manifesto pledges because Britain was the biggest beneficiary of US Marshall aid.
Clearly, Labour’s pitch to voters in 2024 is a lot different from the radical makeover it was offering in 1945. On the one hand, it says that the failures of the Tories in the past 14 years require a change of direction. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem able to sketch out much of a vision of what that change might be, beyond reform of the planning system, a focus on skills and the new deal for workers.
Unions already fear that the last in that list – a package of new employment rights – will be watered down as a result of lobbying by business. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, says that what Britain needs more than anything now is stability, and in a speech earlier this week she went so far as to claim that – in somewhat Orwellian fashion – “stability is change”.
Stability would make a change, that’s for sure, and Reeves and Keir Starmer might be right in thinking that many voters are small-c conservative, don’t really favour radical policies, and just want to get on with their lives.
Liz Truss’s 49-day stint in Downing Street has made it even more difficult for Labour to deviate from the economic and financial orthodoxy in which an independent Bank of England sets interest rates and an independent Office for Budget Responsibility passes judgment on tax and spending decisions. Not, to be frank, that there was much evidence of the current Labour party wanting to rock the boat anyway. As far as Starmer and Reeves are concerned, orthodoxy will help Labour win the election, and that’s what really matters. Sunak and the current chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, are equally wedded to the orthodoxy.
All of which means this is shaping up to be a curious campaign. Both parties say the other poses a risk to the economy, yet both are committed to the same, nonsensical, fiscal rule, which says that debt as a share of national income must be falling within five years.
By sticking to the fiction that they will stick to ultra-tight spending plans after the election, both main parties say there is no need for them to raise serious amounts of extra money by raising tax. Both say they have a plan for the economy, but it amounts to the same plan: the hope that a growing economy will allow them to avoid unpopular tax and spending decisions. Raising the economy’s growth rate is a lot more difficult than politicians are prepared to admit.
Labour is miles ahead in the polls and playing it safe. The “don’t drop the Ming vase” approach involves posing as both the pro-business and pro-worker party. It wants to be seen as the fiscally responsible choice that brings calm after the chaos, to be pro-change and pro-continuity. By contrast, Sunak wants to break things. The prime minister has been coming up with a headline-grabbing policy initiative a day. It smacks of damage limitation, even desperation.
There are two risks for Starmer and Reeves here. The lesser risk is that voters – many of whom dislike the Tories more than they like Labour – change their minds during the campaign. The greater risk is that Labour wins an Attlee-style landslide but then doesn’t know what to do with it. Growth might come to the rescue, but it might not. The danger for Starmer and Reeves is that they lock the economy into a new era of austerity that makes absolutely zero economic sense and for which there is absolutely zero political appetite.
Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editor
